New Wine

Think of a world of goodness.  A world of hope and happiness in which people are fulfilled and not wronged.  A place where you are known for who you are and you can drop the masks of conformity and social acceptance.  A place where things are as they should be.

Doesn't exist, right?  Many people have promised it in one form or another.  Many have sought it in one form or another.  Many try to bluff us into believing it is in a certain system or organization.  But our hearts know when it isn't there, right?  Deep down, they can't lie and we know when we're being fooled.

I was taught that Jesus was the way to all those things. That it didn't exist in this world, but it would in the place called heaven where no bad thing could enter. That Jesus was the gatekeeper.  That we had to follow him.  That all we had to do was accept his free gift.  Well, accept it and truly believe it.  That, and stop doing bad things.  Oh, and go to church, learn about him.  Yeah, and memorize Bible verses, and not listen to music that was too wild...unless the band was Christian, but then only if they really acted like it because you know people say they are, but the proof is in their life.  Which, while we're at it, let's talk about your clothes.  Oh, and of course, you HAVE to witness.  That's everyone's job because there's so many people out there going to hell because they don't believe right, which we can tell because they don't do all the things we do.  Of course, we can't judge.  Some of them could actually be saved.  But definitely not those over there.

God help me! Is it any wonder I lost my mind?  Who can keep that up?  It's insidious and wicked to the core!  It eats up those who spew it like stomach acid.  So if that's what hope is, I can't have it.  And without hope, there's only nihilism.  A dry empty desert of never-ending grey.  No direction, no purpose.  Just blind existence.  Nothing matters.  Maybe I'll just die today and think, 'finally' as the life slips out of me and I release the curse of consciousness.

But in that place, something broke through in me.  It was fresh and bright and full of energy.  I didn't know what it was, but it appeared, when I could see it, with strong male arms and hands.  Of course, I pretended it must be Jesus because that's what I had been taught, but I didn't really know.  I was just glad to have breath.  To see light.  To see that the world was hopeless because the hope was outside of it.  While I didn't know who or what that was, I was hooked.  I didn't care, something inside was screaming that was what I needed.

If it ate me up, I didn't care.  That was life and I needed it. Like heat migrates to cold, it was soaking into me and I didn't want it to stop.

It wasn't at all like the Jesus I had been taught.  So I dropped what I knew like a broken toy.  If Jesus and this light went two separate directions, I was following the light.  How could I not!  This thing was palpable.  I couldn't go back to that death.  But the weird thing is, the more I tried to shake off the Jesus I had been taught, the more I kept finding he wasn't really what I had been taught.  When I read his words with my own fresh eyes, they didn't say what I had been taught they said.  They said things that flared that light inside me.  Things I didn't find anywhere else.

Now I've blogged enough about my darkness.  That cloud in my flesh never really goes away.  But deep inside, there's still this place of light that no one gets to see.  And I mean that, no one.  And from that place of freedom come all kinds of good things that make people look at me like I'm from some other planet.

But then, I keep trying to find others who share this understanding and in every church, in every group, I find sparks of it, that quickly get smothered by a heap of stinking wet leaves every time they flare!  Why is it that people can't stop heaping their own death on the living fire?

Don't get me wrong, some have and we get along like the kindred spirits we are.  But most of those that think they get it don't.  They try to pull me in, they see something in me they can't place, but they like it, so they try to rein it into their system.  But you can't!

I'm telling you all, you know who you are.  You can't rein it in because it isn't in me.  You can't rein me in because I'm in it.  It's so much bigger.  You touch it and then try to bottle it.  But it can't be bottled, and I have to be true to that light and truth.  I don't steer it, box, it, guide it.  It guides me!  It...or He as I have come to know Him guides me.  In my deep place where He sits, I know what's right and what isn't.

See, even now, you're searching your mental scripts for a place to stick what I'm saying.  You think you've got it.  We'll, I'll help you out...it's in the Bible.  "Stand at the door and knock", "Come in to him and make my home with him", you're hearing the songs from Sunday School about Jesus in your heart.  Yeah, that's because they're describing this!  It just isn't what you think it is!!  If it was, you wouldn't look at me like you can't quite get me.  You'd look at me like you know what I know.  I can tell man!  I know because I came to it from the outside.  I couldn't see it from the inside either. 

So you know what?  I'm done with it.  I'm shaking the dust off and going to those who aren't tainted.  New wine skins for new wine, yeah?

The very images you use to leave people in the dust who disagree with you are what I'm using to part ways with you.  But unlike your understanding, I don't think it means you aren't worth my time or are in error.  We just don't speak the same language and therefore we can't communicate.  You think we do, but we don't because when I try to make a point, you say, "Yeah! and then go totally the other direction."

But I will leave you with a sign post in the direction I'm heading.  Because I know you'll come sooner or later.  Whether your rules involve authorities and buildings, or annointings and movements, or doings and houses, they're still performance-based systems motivated out of ought and should and gotta.  And if you think yours isn't, test it in this way:  Refuse or challenge what some leader in your system says should happen.  Do it to them directly...politely, but in no uncertain terms.  See what happens.  Dollars to doughnuts, their reaction is severe, possibly angry, and rooted in threat response.  Because people who don't line up show the cracks in their boxes and what can't be controlled must be expelled.  Don't believe me?  Try it.

To everyone else, don't be afraid to follow that light and good you feel.  Chase it down where you find it.  That love won't lead you too far off.  And if anything I've said has sparked that in you, come find me.  I mean that.  I'll help you carry your baggage and I don't need to see what's inside it.  We'll follow that light until we find that place to rest.

Light

I'm finding it difficult to talk about this. I keep having these flashes of insight that I just can't put into words when I sit down to do it. I keep diverging into paths I don't want to take. Like trying to get a needle through the exact right spot and constantly coming up in another part of the cloth. I want to talk about light. The kind of piercing bright living light that we find from time to time. It's more than a metaphor. If you haven't experienced it, go find it. It is such an apt description of God. Light emanates and drives back the nothing which is darkness.

I used to shy from light. I preferred the solace of darkness and that was good for a time. It can be perverted like anything else, but light is incorruptible. Now I am so drawn to it. Illuminate! Spread the light out, pierce the dark corners. I want to be known and not hide. I want my scars to show. I want my ruin to be displayed so that it loses all power. In the light there can be no shame, no guilt. All is revealed and the things of darkness lose their power.

I don't wish that any who are afraid of the light be forced into it. Not that I'm against forcing because sometimes we are ready and won't move until forced, but to those who are not ready, forcing does more damage than good. So I want them to be sheltered. But for me, I am so tired of the games we play trying to keep our eyes shut. The light bathes and cleanses and frees us from these pretensions. In the light we can call what is wrong wrong and we can call what is right right. There's no need to beat around it.

I am imperfect and ruined by my own hand and in that I celebrate God's goodness to me. I want to walk in the light, be in the light. I can sometimes feel myself surrounded by light when I close my eyes. The space in my mind which used to be dark is now blindingly bright. There is no falsehood in it. I can picture it bleeding out through my pores and overcoming me. I can picture projecting it, shining it, dancing with it, in it, freed by it. Shining on the poor wretched things cowering in the dark, right at our feet, but unseen in the dark. What things are right at your hand? What pains, fears, humors and valiants beaten to submission, uglies, not good enoughs, sicks, disturbeds. I want to walk into the dark places and have the very ground light at my step on it. I want to see the light fall over them and pass through me to them.

I want to stare long and hard into the blinding source of that light. I want to know him. I want to see it washing out of and over my friends. I want them to let go and stop hiding as well. I want it to overwhelm me and consume me and never leave me. I want it to root out all corners of darkness to the deepest cellars of my soul. I want them to glow of their own with real radiant light not the sickly imitations we shine on them.

I once wrote that some people huddle to candle flickers and cherish them beyond all else but can't see those dancing in absolute conflagration behind them.

The lights have been turned on. Reason, Redemption, Freedom, Restoration, Peace, Rest: all of these have come to those least able to receive them. Even I can't fully accept this. I want those dark places to be illuminated.

Again, I don't mean the darkness that is good, that gives rest and perspective and gravity, but the darkness that hides and shames. The one which festers and bites and imprisons. This must go and everything in those dark places must come to light. I'm ready for it...at least for another step.